Trees, Trees, and Trees

[Terry Green]

I use trees as land marks, for navigation and area descriptions, cause I name them.

This Tree I'm going to show a pic of has now died.  I visited this tree on opening day after not visiting it in about 8 years.  The pics don't do it justice, especially since the bark has slid off. To this day only saplings dwell here as the canopy has been dominated for a century.

It looks like a tree out of Lord of the Rings....

So, do any of you have special trees, even ones you've named for reference?

Introducing the late great Ooga Booga tree...whos seen more bears than any man...

[Terry Green]

 

[Bowguy67]

I’ve nfver named trees nor have I considered them special but I do use unique ones or parts for reference points going in.
Used to go into this swamp w no bright eyes. I never use em anyway instead using natural landmarks.
I typically don’t use a light either so often trees or groups of trees are distinguishable by looking up into the night sky.
This swamp had a tree w a busted top. Idk how long I used it to help navigate but one day it was gone and it through me for a loop

[dnovo]

I’ve never named trees, but I pay attention to them. I learned to observe and distinguish individual trees in a forest where most people thought they all looked alike. Easy to navigate when you observe things like that.
Had some special trees that were great stand trees and felt lost when it was logged and they were gone.
Yes trees are special

[stickandstring]

I often find myself revisiting trees which over the years I have ambushed from. Some have died, others are still there but are now too large to climb. When I see good strong trees being swallowed up with vines, I cut the vines to keep them healthy. Ive been in the same woods now 34 years.

[Pine]

The closest I come to that is the Big White Pine next to the Dinosaur Rock. 
If I tell my wife that she knows what I'm talking about and so do the grown up kids.

[SlowBowKing]

Never named trees, and I'm probably not as observant of them as I should be, especially when they're clumped in a group and I can't see the trees for the woods.  However, on occasion a really large, unique, odd, etc. one will catch my attention. Maybe I'll try out the naming thing.

I guess most of the trees I've had a special attachment to have been near the house. We just lost our last of the "original" trees in our yard, a 115 year old rock maple...the trunk--about four or five feet thick--is being cut down tomorrow.

King

[Orion]

Mine aren't particularly poetic, but I have named a few trees.  Actually they're more stand names.  I've got the spruce tree stand, the spruce thicket stand, the cherry tree stand, the gnarly oak stand to name a few.

My spruce tree stand is an outlier in a birch/aspen forest, and I definitely use it for navigation. I use a number of other trees, usually with unusual features, to help with navigation as well.  Generally haven't given them names, but just describe them by their features or species.  Think I'll start naming a few. 

[Terry Green]

Up at Ooga Booga, over at Pisa(leaning white oak with diagonal bark from centuries of bear claws), down at Goliath....Twisty, Dilly Whip, Twin Towers, Wicked One, Homestead, Duggout, etc...

These trees are great reference for areas we know are good, whether the trees are dropping or not.

Maybe I live in an area that has unique trees 

[ron w]

Used the Lonesome Pine as a landmark for years while hunting in the Adirondacks. That tree had to be 250 years old, a real monarch !!!

[supernaut]

I've named trees over the years (The Big Oak, Gnarly Cherry, etc.) and always use them for reference points. I always wonder, "If that big, old tree could talk what kind of stories could it tell?". Here is a pretty neat tree I spotted several weeks ago scouting. I guess if I named this one, Eye of the Needle might fit.

[Sam McMichael]

I have only named a few, or more correctly, stands associated with particular trees. I once built a massive platform stand and set it against a large oak tree. It was called "The Tower". It was a good stand till a storm blew the tree down. I had another, "The Big White Oak". It was a beautiful tree, and I built a ground blind there. Lightning took it out. Most of my other named stands were named after other landmarks than trees.

[Trenton G.]

Never named them really, but I have a bunch of them that I know and recognize.

[wood carver 2]

There was ( hopefully still is ) a giant cottonwood down the street from where I used to live. It’s a beauty, well over 100 feet tall and at least 6 feet in diameter.
I sure hope it’s still there.
Dave.

[smokin joe]

Right now, my deer hunting spot has "The Big Oak" and "The Other Big Oak" and "The Oak by the Pines" --- I know I have to get more creative in my tree naming. I'll work on it.

[Badlands]

Terry
Maybe you could incorporate some wood from that tree into a bow someday!
I made a bow riser out of a piece from an Ash tree once.  It wasn't much to look at but it was nice to have a piece of wood that I had harvested myself in the bow that I was using at the time.

[arrow30]

I have one that is full of vines, it is my cut off of the main trail to my ( hunting area)it is quite visible in the night sky, or daylight during the day, I laid under it and took a great nap inside of all the vines that run around the base of it in the rain one day and there is a broadhead buried in a elm tree not 20 yds from it that I shot just under a doe as I was sneaking in to my stand one day. I seem to navigate the woods by the different trees along my way. I have been turned around before in the dark because I missed my tree that I was looking for in the dark.

[J. Cook]

Great Thread!  I've never named a tree, however, I have some that are of particular importance to me.  Some are location markers, some are key mast producers, some have many specific memories tied to them.  The memorable ones on the 2 farms that I hunt back home in WV that I hunt are special because the sight of them let's me know I'm home again... 

We do have 1 particular tree that we have called many names over the years ...all of which wouldn't be acceptable in polite company!!!  It's a Mockernut Hickory in a really fantastic spot for us.  If any of you have had the "pleasure" of using a climbing stand in a Mockernut, you know why we cuss that tree repeatedly.  The bark is so hard, you climb 12" up, slide down 6" and repeat.  It's a butt-puckering experience!  LOL    We've hunted that tree for 20+ years and there's not a single mark on it - it's like trying to climb a galvanized steel light pole.   

[Cyclic-Rivers]

The tree in the background of this picture is of a tree called the landmark tree. It was used in the earliest recorded survey of the property. About a decade ago some stupid surveyor hacked a notch in it and put a nail with a ribbon in the side.

[Cyclic-Rivers]

There was another tree in the Adirondack's we called country. Different spelling and looked to have a female body part on it. It's where we would turn off the secondary trail and up to a blind.